Basics: Strength Training (2 of 2)

Yesterday we discussed the why of strength training.  Now we’re going to talk about how.

Pick up weight.  Put down.  Repeat.

 

Just kidding, mostly.

 

We need to make sure we work out our whole bodies.  That means we need lower body exercises, upper body exercises, abdominal exercises, and exercises that work both the back and the front of the body.  A good basic list includes squats, deadlifts, bench press or pushups, rows, pretty princesses, and supermans.

 

When we start out lifting weights, we want to build some endurance and stability first.  That means we lift relatively light weights a lot of times and we incorporate some balance challenges (throw in some single leg exercises or do those squats on a BOSU, for example).  The best way to figure out the right weight is to experiment.  We want a weight we can use with good form for 15 to 20 reps.  As with all strength training, as we get stronger, we will need to increase the weight, dialing the reps back down to the low end of the range and working our way back up.  We can do two or three sets of reps for each exercise.

 

Once we’re more confident about the whole idea of weightlifting, we can choose a variety of goals.  Maybe we want to build big muscles or get as strong as possible.  In the first instance, we want to choose slightly heavier weights and work in the 8 to 10 rep range.  In the second, we want to work in sets of up to 5, continually increasing the weight until we can complete only one good-looking rep.  Another possible goal is power, which means lifting a whole bunch of weight really fast.  We want to do that after we have mastered form and we’ve worked on max strength for a while.  Power strength training is best done with a trainer for safety.

 

For folks just getting started, commit to one strength training workout a week.  When that habit is ingrained, we can add a second weight workout.  That is enough for most people, but those of us who get really into it can add more.  We need to keep in mind, however, that we don’t want to work the same muscle groups two days in a row.  This is why some people do lower body work on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays and upper body work on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, keeping Sunday as a rest day.  (Bad news:  it is ok to do ab work every day.)

 

Still have questions?  That’s what I’m here for!  Ask me!

Basics: Strength Training (1 of 2)

Last week we went over the basics of cardio.  This week, we turn our attention to strength training.

There are a lot of us who, having figured out the cardio thing, don’t really care about strength training.  We go run or dance or swim or whatever and we feel fabulous and why would we want to do anything else?

 

There are a bunch of reasons.  One of them is that time, from our perspective, only flows in one direction, which means that we are all getting older.  As we age, we lose lean body mass even if our weight remains unchanged.  One of the markers of good health is a low body fat percentage and the way we keep that low body fat percentage is by increasing our lean muscle mass.  How do we do that when time is against us?  By strength training.  It helps us keep the sand in the upper half of the hour glass longer.

 

Additionally, we need strength training as we get older to help us keep our bones strong.  Work with weights helps to stave off osteoporosis.

 

Those of us who want to lose weight will do better with strength training because of the aforementioned lean body mass increase.  Muscle burns more calories per pound than fat does, which means that as we add muscle, we fire up our metabolism.

 

Need more reasons?  We’ll look better.  Strength training gives our muscles tone and makes us more shapely.  (Those of us who identify as female don’t need to worry about bulking up; it is actually challenging for women to get bulky.  We’re much more likely to get smaller and tighter-looking.)

 

Even more?  Strength training is practical.  We all need to lug groceries around and shift furniture from time to time and open jars.  Stronger people are more able to be independent.

 

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how we go about this whole strength training thing.

Monday Workout: Core and Balance

This week we’re working on core and balance with our whole body work!  Three rounds.

 

step up to balance	30
(lunge) to curl to overhead	20
truck driver	10
kb swings	30
kb twist	20
kb 8s	10
squat to leg lift	30
rows	20
brains	10

 

The Amazing Stickie and Side Lift

The Amazing Stickie loves all varieties of planks because of their benefits for her core and general strength.  One of her favorites is the Pilates side lift.

To begin, she lies on her side, her body propped up on one elbow placed directly below her shoulder.  Her hand is out in front of her body.  Her other hand is lying along the side of her body that is toward the ceiling.  She inhales to prepare and on an exhale, she presses her elbow into the ground to straighten her body from head to toe by lifting her hips up toward the ceiling.  She balances on the side of her bottom foot and her elbow for as long as she wants and then lowers herself (with control!) back to the starting position.

 

If she wants more challenge, once she is in the side plank position, she can raise her upper arm away from her body and lift the top leg.

 

Stickie also knows that it is possible to do this exercise balancing on an extended arm rather than on an elbow.  She advises trying all the variations until we decide which one we like best.

Basics: Cardio (2 of 2)

Yesterday we talked about the very basics of cardio.  Today we’re going to add a key technique, the cardio interval.

Most of us, when we head to the gym in the dark, cold morning, plop ourselves on the spin bike or the treadmill or the stair machine and go at a steady pace until we’re done.  This is a perfectly valid way to work out and if it is working for us, we can carry on.

 

However, those of us who want to progress more quickly, or have already progressed to the point where we are bored, or just want to get out the gym quicker may want to try intervals.  Here’s how they work.  We warm up for five minutes or so.  Then we bump up the pace or incline or resistance for a minute so that we’re working at the very high end of our appropriate range.  At the end of the minute, we return to a pace/incline/resistance that allows us to recover (but still stay in our target heart rate zone) for a minute or so.  Then we repeat the tough minute and the recovery period as many times as we want, ending with a cool down. We can burn an hour’s worth of steady-state calories in half an hour this way AND we improve our cardio function more than just chugging along.

 

A few notes to keep in mind, though.  Many pieces of equipment with programs already on them have an interval program.  If the hard interval is longer than one minute, it’s not really interval training (but it might be fun and we can certainly try it).  The key to interval training is that we work as hard as we possibly can for that minute.  By the end of a minute, we have used up our ATP supplies (remember ATP from biology way back when?  It’s our quick energy cellular power.  We have about a minute’s supply before it’s depleted and we have to give it a minute or so to regroup.).  If we’re working hard enough, we really can’t go longer than a minute without a recovery.  Our bodies will inevitably slow once our ATP is depleted.

 

The recovery interval can vary.  When we first start out with intervals, we might need three or four minutes to recover between intense intervals.  As we get more fit, that time can shorten until we’re doing minute on and minute off.

 

If we are working out outside and don’t want to focus on our watches, we can do our intervals by distance.  We choose a landmark like the end of the block or a really cool tree and go as fast as possible until we get there.  Then we pick another landmark and go slower until we get to that one.  Alternatively, we can choose a route with built-in intervals in the form of hills, which work for walking and running and biking and the like.  Outside intervals may not exactly align with the one minute max and the ATP cycle as discussed above, but they still work.

 

Go play.

Basics: Cardio (1 of 2)

It’s a new year, so we’re going back to basics.  This week I’ll spend two days going over what we need to know about cardio.  Next week, we’ll talk about weights.  The week after that, we’ll discuss Pilates.  Then stretching the week after that.  Finally, in the last week of January, we’ll put it all together and talk about goals.  Why this way?  Because it’s hard to set goals when we don’t have basic information.  It’s worth waiting until the end of the month to set goals because we’ll be equipped to set better goals than we can right this very minute with the knowledge we have.  Ready?  Here we go.

I’m starting with cardio because cardio is a good foundation for everything else we do.  It’s also easy to get started with cardio because nearly all of us can go for a walk.

 

Let’s define what we’re talking about here.  Cardiovascular exercise is movement that makes our hearts beat faster and our lungs work harder.  The benefits of cardio exercise range from boosts in mood and cognitive function to calorie-burning to improved heart health to the ability to go upstairs without feeling like we’re going to die.  We can get cardio exercise by walking, running, skiing, swimming, biking, dancing, skating, and playing a variety of sports.  This list is (obviously) not comprehensive.  If it gets the heart rate up and keeps it there for a good while, it counts.

 

To be effective, we want to get our heart rates up to 65 to 85% of our maximum heart rate.  Those of us who wear fitness trackers or smart watches can ignore the following math:  our gizmos do it for us.  The rest of us can get out the calculator app on our phones.  The quick-and-dirty math for calculating our maximum heart rate is to subtract our age from 220.  I will use myself as the example.  I am 55, so my max heart rate is 220-55, or 165.  Then I use that number to calculate my training range, which is a heart rate between 107 (65% of 165) and 140 (85% of 165).  I can take my own pulse for a minute during a workout to check that I’m working hard enough.  In my experience, it is rare for people to work too hard; when we get above 85% of our maximum heart rate, we feel terrible and slow down.  However, any special snowflakes out there who like to feel terrible might want to check the heart rate to make sure to stay on the safe side of the max.

 

Now that I made everyone do math (sorry!), I will suggest that we don’t need to pay too much attention to the numbers.  As we get moving, we get a feel for how hard we’re working on a given day.  When we quantify that, we get a scale of perceived exertion, which ranges from 0 (equivalent to lying on the couch) to 10 (please shoot me now).  (No, those are not the actual descriptions for the scale numbers, but they get the point across.)  We want to aim for a 7 or 8 (working hard, but we can still cope).  More simply still, we can assess how hard we are working by talking.  If we can still mostly carry on a conversation, we’re all right.  If we can sing, we’re not working hard enough.  If we have to pause our clever response to breathe, we’re working too hard.

 

How long we walk (or run, or rollerskate, or swim, or bike, or Zumba) is another factor we have to consider.  If we haven’t hoisted ourselves out of the comfy chair for the last couple of years, we’re going to start with less time than those of us who just chilled out for a few days over the holiday.  It is better to start slow and easy.  In fact, I’m in favor of the stupidly easy beginning.  So, couch potato friends:  walk five minutes to start.  Ultimately, we want to work up to about 150 minutes per week, which is 30 minutes per day, five days a week.

 

Go play.

Monday Workout: Happy New Year!

Welcome to the new year!  We have a pretty comprehensive whole body workout to get us back in gear.  Three rounds.

 

mountain climbers	30
flies	20
pushup renegade rows	10
push press	30
deadlifts	20
YTA	10
leg kicks	30
bench press	20
pretty princesses	10